ELA 10: May 16-20

This week we will shift from studying and reading op-eds to writing them.  Last week the students practiced a number of strategies last week to help them “read between the lines”:

• Questioning the text by asking “Oh, really?”
  
• Finding Contrasts and Contradictions
  
• Examining Extreme and Absolute Language
  
• Noting Quoted Words and Phrases
  
• Studying Numbers and Statistics
  
• Identifying Word Gaps
  

Your students should be able to show you how to do all these things when reading editorials; it would be great if you could read one together at some point this week! Our goal with all of these strategies is to look closely at the writer’s intended message in order to decide how much we believe it.  

This week, as students shift to writing, we’ll work on applying all of those strategies to their own writing. Monday and Tuesday we will brainstorm topics and begin outlining our arguments; by the end of the week, students will have a very rough draft of their op-ed.

We are also beginning NWEA testing this week so students will be missing some classes in small groups to complete their testing. In order to keep them on track, I’m experimenting with some short, videotaped lessons that will be available for the students on Google Classroom starting Wednesday.  If all goes as planned, I’ll send the links to those lessons in next week’s blog post as well.

Have a great week!

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